Istanbul Airport Attack

Turkish officials have said three foreign nationals – a Russian from Dagestan, an Uzbek and a Kyrgyz – carried out the shooting and triple suicide bombing at Istanbul’s Atatürk airport on that killed 42 people.

This enhances the chances that the terrorist attack was indeed an ISIS operation and it gives it an even more international or “global” flavor.

It is known that ISIS has some 4700 fighters from the former Soviet Republics, many from Chechnya (around 2,200 according to one recent Russian estimate) and other Caucasus provinces. Many of the organization’s leaders are also Chechens, like Abu Omar al Shishani, the second in command of IS operations in Syria killed in an US drone attack in March 2016.

The participation of Central Asian and Caucasus members in the attack could boost ISIS’s strategy of consolidating its Wilāyat al-Qawqāz in its competition with the older and independent Islamic Emirate of the Caucasus.This could be a hint that Russia could be the next target of ISIS jihadists of Central Asian and Caucasus origin.

It is known that Turkish Islamist and nationalist circles support the fight of the Caucasus and Central Asian Turkish peoples against Russia and in the past Chechen terrorists have used Turkey to stage attacks against Russian targets.

You can see short interviews I gave on the Istanbul airport attack at: